Surprise Prince EP to Arrive One Year After Death

Prince delivers a fiery vocal and guitar performance on “Deliverance,” the title-track from his new posthumous EP. Photo: Scott Penner

Prince unleashes fervent guitar and vocal performance on “Deliverance,” the title-track from a new posthumous EP out April 21st. Deliverance is available to pre-order through digital retailers, while the song can be streamed on Apple Music.

“Deliverance” opens with fierce blues riff before settling into a steady gospel-tinged groove that builds with an increasingly bombastic mix of guitar, organ and back-up vocals. Prince’s vocals are nimble but charged – “You can ease the pain of a few but until God intervenes/ Ain’t nothing, nothing man can do/ Except cause each other injury/ Somebody say, ‘Katrina levees'” – while the musician also unleashes a quintessentially roaring guitar solo.

Prince co-wrote and co-produced the six Deliverance songs with frequent collaborator Ian Boxill between 2006 and 2008. Boxill completed and mixed the songs after Prince’s death last year. Along with the title song, the EP includes a four-movement medley titled “Man Opera” that comprises the tracks “I Am,” “Touch Me,” “Sunrise Sunset” and “No One Else.” The EP closes with an extended version of “I Am.”

The six Deliverance tracks were also written while Prince was working as an independent artist and fittingly the EP will be released via the Vancouver-based indie label, RMA. In a statement, Boxill said, “Prince once told me that he would go to bed every night thinking of ways to bypass major labels and get his music directly to the public. When considering how to release this important work, we decided to go independent because that’s what Prince would have wanted.”

News of Deliverance arrives after search warrants for the singer’s Paisley Park compound were unsealed Monday, providing some insight into the musician’s death from an accidental overdose of the painkiller Fentanyl at age 57. The warrants uncovered controlled substances – primarily painkillers that required a doctor’s prescription – hidden throughout the compound.